During Fiscal Year 2013, EDA invested $6,949,914 in 15 projects in the State of Michigan. These projects are expected to create or retain 1,106 jobs and leverage $6,625,000 in private investment, according to grantee estimates. EDA’s investments help Michigan communities achieve bottom-up, locally-defined economic development goals and strategies.

EDA offers a complementary, balanced portfolio of grant programs designed to help rural and urban communities grow their private sectors and create jobs.

Investment Spotlight: Promoting Bio-Based Product Manufacturing

Michigan is home to the greatest concentration of automotive production and innovation in North America, with over 400 R&D centers for several large domestic and international automakers, and hundreds of automotive suppliers accounting for nearly 80% of annual U.S. automotive R&D expenditures. Michigan is also a national leader in agriculture, ranking second in bio-diversity of agricultural products and home to agricultural production, value-added processing, logistics and distribution, and innovation around plant-based advanced materials manufacturing.

Bio-based materials offer advantages from both environmental and economic perspectives. These materials are increasingly being deployed in a number of automotive components. Sector opportunities exist, but the area supply chain cannot respond to the same. The manufacturing of advanced bio-based materials is dependent on a mature supply chain that is able to meet all of the needs of parts suppliers and automakers in a just-in-time, flexible, manufacturing setting. Additionally, current manufacturing capabilities are limited by a need for a qualified workforce and a shortage of researchers and engineers capable of developing and producing these new materials.

In order to overcome these obstacles, the region needed a roadmap to making the region a successful and sustainable bio-based materials hub that can support a complete supply chain. Through its Make It in America Challenge, EDA awarded $400,000 to the Center for Automotive Research (CAR) and the National Center for Manufacturing Sciences to support a comprehensive study of the bio-based product manufacturing cluster and its existing and potential relationship to the automotive manufacturing sector. The award provides specific and specialized technical assistance to firms within the sector. The project is expected to undertake supplier scouting initiatives, provide access to high performance computing tools for modeling and simulating, and offer technical assistance to at least ten cluster companies located in a 22-county region of southeast Michigan.